New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture

PART ONE—Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America

16. Summary and Conclusions

Theagricultural censuses taken in the United States in 1900 and
      1910 are the last word in social statistics in this sphere of
      the economy. It is the best material of any available in the
      advanced countries, covering millions of farms and allowing
      precise well-founded conclusions on the evolution of agriculture
      under capitalism. One other particular reason why this material
      can be used to study the laws of the evolution is that the
      U.S.A. has the largest size, the greatest diversity of
      relationships, and the greatest range of nuances and forms of
      capitalist agriculture.

Wefind here, on the one hand, a transition from the
      slave-holding—or what is in this case the same, from the
      feudal—structure of agriculture to commercial and
      capitalist agriculture; and, on the other hand, capitalism
      developing with unusual breadth and speed in the freest and most
      advanced bourgeois country. We observe alongside of this
      remarkably extensive colonization conducted on democratic
      capitalist lines.

Wefind here areas which have long been settled, highly
      industrialized, highly intensive, and similar to most of the
      areas of civilized, old-capitalist Western Europe; as well as
      areas of primitive, extensive cropping and stock-raising, like
      some of the outlying areas of Russia or parts of Siberia. We
      find large and small farms of the most diverse types: great
      latifundia, plantations of the former slave-holding South, and
      the homestead West, and the highly capitalist North of the
      Atlantic seaboard; the small farms of the Negro share-croppers,
      and the small capitalist farms producing milk and vegetables for
      the market in the industrial Northor fruits on the Pacific
      coast; “wheat factories” employing hired labour and thehomesteadsof “independent” small farmers, still full
      of naïve illusions about living by the “labour of their own
      hands”.

Thisis a remarkable diversity of relationships, embracing both
      past and future, Europe and Russia. The comparison with Russia
      is especially instructive, by the way, in regard to the question
      of the consequences of a possible transfer of all land to the
      peasants without compensation, a measure that is progressive but
      undoubtedly capitalist.

TheU.S.A. offers the most convenient example for the study of
      the general laws of capitalist development in agriculture and
      the variety of forms these laws assume. A study of this kind
      leads up to conclusions which may be summed up in the following
      brief propositions.

Inagriculture, as compared with industry, manual labour
      predominates over machinery to an immeasurably greater
      extent. But the machine is steadily advancing, improving farming
      techniques, extending the scale of operations and making them
      more capitalist. In modern agriculture, machinery is used in the
      capitalist way.

Hiredlabour is the chief sign and indicator of capitalism in
      agriculture. The development of hired labour, like the growing
      use of machinery, is evident inallparts of the
      country, and in every branch of agriculture. The growth in the
      number of hired labourers outstrips the growth of the country’s
      rural and total population. The growth in the number of farmers
      lags behind that of the rural population. Class contradictions
      are intensified and sharpened.

Thedisplacement of small-scale by large-scale production in
      agriculture is going forward. This is fully proved by a
      comparison of the returns for 1900 and 1910 on total farm
      property.

However,this displacement is understated, and the condition of
      the small farmers is shown in bright colors because
      statisticians in America in 1910 confined themselves—as in
      fact they did almost everywhere in Europe—to grouping the
      farms by acreage. The wider and faster the intensification of
      agriculture, the higher is the degree of this understatement and
      the brighter the colors.

Capitalismgrows not only by accelerating the development of
      large-acreage farms in extensive areas, but also by creating in
      the intensive areas enterprises on smaller tracts whose
      operations are on a much larger scale and are much more
      capitalist.

Asa result, the concentration of production in the large
      enterprises is actually much greater—and the displacement
      of small-scale production actually goes farther and
      deeper—than is indicated by ordinary data about farms
      grouped by acreage. The returns of the 1900 Census, compiled
      with greater care and in greater detail, are more scientific and
      leave no doubt at all on this score.

Theexpropriation of small-scale agriculture is advancing. In
      the last few decades, the proportion of owners to the total
      number of farmers declined steadily, while the growth in the
      number of farmers lagged behind population increase. The number
      of full owners is declining absolutely in the North, the most
      important section, which yields the largest volume of farm
      products and has neither any vestiges of slavery nor any
      extensive homesteading. In the last decade, the proportion of
      farmers reporting livestock in general decreased; in contrast to
      the increased proportion of owners reporting dairy cattle there
      was an even greater increase in the proportion of operators
      without horses, especially among the small farmers.

Onthe whole, a comparison of corresponding data on industry and
      agriculture for the same period shows that although the latter
      is incomparably more backward, there is a remarkable similarity
      in the laws of evolution, and that small-scale production is
      being ousted-from both.